I recently went to an event on Fundraising where Ajit Medhekar, part of Band of Angels, sat on the panel to discuss early stage fundraising and the various seed investment structures. He mentioned that if you’re getting paid, you’re most certainly not a Founder, specifically if this is an early stage company where all you really have is seed investment.

Barely 40 minutes later, I met a founder who’s considering shutting down their company because it wasn’t performing well. They sounded defeated and heartbroken, but this is a tale that’s all too common in Silicon Valley.

Last night, I was at Google on a panel talking about women in entrepreneurship. Afterwards, I chatted with an attendee about the very early days of LaunchBit.

I mentioned that one point, I’d lived at my parents’ house to save money. This shocked her and she replied, “Oh…I could never do that.” And that was just the beginning of all the sacrifices that many people have made in order for LaunchBit to work.

There is so much that goes on behind the scenes of a startup – beyond actually running the core business.